10 Questions With Bron Marshall

I am very excited to start off a new series for the blog today. It is called 10 Questions and every other week, I will be putting a fellow food blogger on the hotseat and ask them .. you guessed right! 10 Questions! The lovely Bron Marshall of the Bron Marshall fame is the first to be put on the spot. When I mentioned doing this feature with her, she was very excited and not only did she answer the questions for all of us to enjoy, but very generously provided me with a special recipe to run with the feature. Thanks heaps Bron!

Read on to discover the quirks and passions of this lovely lady from New Zealand, drool over her Spiced Honey And Fig English Muffin Splits after the interview and drink in the gorgeous pictures she was kind enough to send.

Thank You Bron, for agreeing to do the 10 Questions feature for us. This is most exciting! Let me begin.

1. Your latest food discovery?
Blood Oranges – not so much a discovery but a find I guess, so anyway I splurged food miles and $ on these fellas from the US of A as I’d never had them before, I don’t believe anyone grows them here in New Zealand
 

2. What cookbook has inspired you the most?
I’m not truly sure, I don’t really follow cookbooks or recipes a lot, preferring to get my inspiration from yummy photos, flickr, magazines and blogs. Perhaps I have a short attention span?
I love my copy of David Lebovitz’ Perfect Scoop; before that ice cream was pretty much vanilla / some berry or other / or chocolate. A whole new world has opened up for me there with pear caramel ice cream, rice pudding ice cream, fig ice cream. I’m also inspired by Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Making Apprentice.

3. Your fondest food memory?
My Aunty Dorothy’s Apple Shortcake with the softest, unpasteurised and most velvety whipped cream evah! served after a lamb roast on Sundays. However most importantly it was all made at the old farm with the purest and freshest of ingredients, her own farm butter, milk, cream, free range eggs and granny gmith apples; and me helping her collect them beforehand as a young nipper, sitting up high on a wall watching the cows being milked. No one can reproduce or beat that shortcake!

4. Your most trusty kitchen companion?
My Wusthof 24cm Chef knife, without a doubt

 
5. Quick, tell us 10 things that are in your fridge right now!
Milk, NZ butter, our own free range eggs, blueberries, feta cheese, apple cider vinegar, flax seed oil, free range organic bacon, homemade blackcurrant cordial, Kewpie Japanese Mayonnaise (how’d that get in there?!)

6. One ingredient that frightens you the most? Why?
Hmm I had to think about this one for a while, I think it’s probably sugar. Being as it’s so highly addictive and not so good for us and I’ve been known to eat way too much of it. Also I’d really like to be better at making sugar art, spun sugar decorations, just caramelising and pastry art in general, yet I lack practise and a candy thermometer. Plus sugar burns are the worst.. basically I’m a bit of a klutz actually.

7. What are you doing food wise to be more ecologically responsible?
I always try to buy in season and locally and if at all possible organic, we grow an ever increasing amount of our own vegetables, keep chickens and other farm animals from time to time. What waste our chickens don’t eat we compost and put back into the garden. I also try to stare away from most plastics, melamine in the kitchen, this includes being aware of a food’s packaging when shopping, avoiding gladwrap, plastic lunch bags and boxes, childrens plates, tupperware type containers. Plastic leaches toxins into our food especially when heat is applied, often increased amounts through dish washing, microwaving etc. and there are plenty of more friendlier reusable alternatives to plastic in the kitchen, such as storing in calico bags, stainless steel and ceramic tiffin or small spice pots, covering bowls with a plate, clean towels etc. Ever noticed how leftover curry, tumeric, carrots and such stain plastic containers, which then can also taint the next thing you store? Then they warp and melt in the dishwasher too! Growing your own food is a bonus as you don’t need to store too much at any one time, only cutting what you need for each meal. Hence also why there wasn’t many vegetables in the fridge question above, they’re all out in the garden under frost cloth! When heating up my oven to bake, I try to make the most of the heat and time the oven is running by cooking several things at once, or baking some cookies, bread straight after a casserole or what have you comes out. As you may guess this is something I’m quite passionate about, for being responsible with regards to our planet, health and my wallet. I hate waste!

8. Which celebrity chef would you invite to dinner? What would you cook for them?
You know I’m not really that excited by celebrity chefs, some would expect I’d be quite fanatical about Donna Hay, having run the HHDD food blogging event, but I’m not. Certainly she is very successful in what she does and enjoy her publications. However I would much rather invite a bunch of my favourite bloggers David Lebovitz, Ilva Beretta, Beatrice Peltre, Jeanne Horak, Lara Ferroni, Helen McSweeney, Kalyn Denny, Jen Yu to name a very small few and in no particular order. Hmm I would love to have a really long Slow Food day with them; cooking pizzas, breads together in a wood fired oven outside, barbecuing NZ lamb – perhaps a spit roast, preparing fresh salads, fruits and enjoying yummy artisanal cheeses and plenty of great NZ Pinot Noir, simple but really really good.

9. What vegetable are you?
I’m a Kumara or Sweet potato, and a really knobbly, curvy one too!

10. Comfort Food?
Spaghetti Carbonara or Macaroni cheese, definitely something cheesy, creamy and starchy like pasta or risotto.

Cheers!

Bron’s Special Spiced Honey and Fig English Muffin Splits

Ingredients
125 ml of warm water
2 tablespoons of honey
2 teaspoons of dry active yeast
125 ml of hot water
125ml of cold milk
350 grams of strong / high grade bread flour
100 grams of standard all purpose flour
2 tablespoons of Quatre épices (A sweet French blend of equal parts, allspice,cloves,cinnamon,nutmeg)
2 teaspoons of salt
1 cup of chopped dried figs, about 12 figs
1 cup of very fine cornmeal/polenta or rice flour, approximately, to dust
 

Method
Stir through the honey with the first measure of warm water to dissolve and sprinkle over the yeast.
Set aside for a few minutes to foam.
Mix the second measure of hot water with the cold milk to balance out and make a warm liquid.
Put both flours, Quatre épices and salt in a large bowl, make a well and add in the yeast and warm milk mixtures.
Either using your hands, a large wooden spoon or the paddle on your stand mixer. Beat the dough until you have formed an evenly moisten and sticky dough.
Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel or plate and set aside for a few hours or if your prefer overnight to double in size.
Knock back the dough by pulling the edges away from the sides of the bowl.
Either using your hand, although I prefer to use a large metal serving spoon, lift it out large spoonfuls of the dough, dropping each on to a shallow dish liberally dusted with the fine cornmeal or rice flour.
Roll, flip and pat each spoonful of the sticky dough in plenty of the cornmeal to form a thick well dusted round disc.
The recipe will make anywhere from 8 to 14 depending on the size of your spoonfuls.
Place the muffin rounds on a lined baking tray and cover with another sheet of parchment and another baking tray on top to sandwich. Leave the muffin rounds to rest and rise for 20 minutes.
Place a cast iron or heavy based dry frying pan over a low-medium heat and cook the muffins in batches of 4 to 5 for about 10 minutes each side until light golden. You can tell the muffins are cooked through when they feel dense and firm, under cooked ones feel a little squishy and soft.
Wrap the cooked muffins in a tea towel to retain the warmth while you cook the remaining muffins.
Split and serve the muffins warm with butter, however we especially like to toast them and serve them with a little homemade Labna (yoghurt cheese).

Makes 8-14 Muffins

To learn more about Bron and her food blog visit Bron Marshall. You can also catch her tweets on Twitter.